College football’s best rivalries: Our experts vote on top 10
- USA TODAY Sports writers ranked the top 10 greatest and most heated rivalries in college football.
- The rankings were determined by a panel of college writers who scored their top 10 rivalries.
For millions of Americans, Thanksgiving Week offers the opportunity to reflect on the things for which they are most thankful in life — friends and family often among them.
For college football fans, it also marks Rivalry Week, offering a chance to get back at hated rivals and gloat over fallen foes (which often include the aforementioned friends and family).
College football is a sport whose foundation is built on its most heated rivalries. And because the sport lends itself to rankings more than any other — we have three major polls running concurrently, after all — USA TODAY Sports’ panel of college writers has endeavored to rank the top 10 greatest, most heated, most vitriolic and impactful rivalries in the sport.
Each panelist ranked their top rivalries one through 10, with top-ranked rivalries earning 10 points, No. 2 rivalries earning nine points, and so on. Each writer’s top 10 were tallied, creating a consensus ranking that surely will be met with universal acclaim and generate no heated discussions whatsoever.
But hey — even if it does, that’s what rivalries are for, right? With that, here is USA TODAY Sports’ top 10 college football rivalries:
Our top 10 college football rivalries
10. Miami vs Florida State
Though the rivalry may have fallen off in recent years, these teams were once the pinnacle of college football across the 1980s and ’90s. And they hated each other every minute of it.
The Hurricanes and Seminoles combined for six national titles across those two decades, and met 15 times as ranked opponents from 1983 through 1999 (including four times as top-five teams).
9. Florida vs Georgia
Though it no longer holds that moniker, ‘The World’s Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party,’ traditionally held in Jacksonville, Florida, has been the site of many heated meetings between the Gators and Bulldogs. Who can forget when Georgia emptied its benches to celebrate a Knowshon Moreno touchdown in 2007? Or Urban Meyer’s 2008 rebuttal, when he called his timeouts in the final minute of a 49-10 beatdown?
8. Mississippi vs Mississippi State (Egg Bowl)
What the Egg Bowl typically lacks in high stakes it more than makes up for with vitriol.
Look no further than 2019, which saw Ole Miss receiver Elijah Moore catch a touchdown with four seconds remaining to cut the Bulldogs’ lead to 21-20, with only an extra-point attempt separating the teams. Moore celebrated by imitating a urinating dog on Mississippi State’s field, moving the ball back and causing a missed PAT.
Nowhere else but in the Egg Bowl.
7. Pittsburgh vs West Virginia (Backyard Brawl)
One of the gems of the old Big East, the Backyard Brawl between Pitt and West Virginia is perhaps best remembered for that legendary 2007 meeting between the 4-7 Panthers and a Mountaineers team ranked No. 2 in the Bowl Championship Series (BCS) rankings.
All that stood in the way of a West Virginia title game berth was a Panthers team that, instead of rolling over, shocked the college football world with a 13-9 upset over the heavily favored Mountaineers. It remains one of the biggest upsets in the rivalry — and, indeed, college football.
6. BYU vs Utah (Holy War)
BYU and Utah, the two biggest universities in the state of Utah, engage in a rivalry dubbed the Holy War: a nod to both universities’ ties to the Church of Latter-Day Saints (LDS). The Utes and Cougars are also among a select few programs in college football who play in a color-on-color rivalry, with BYU’s blue clashing against Utah’s red almost as viciously as the players wearing them.
5. USC vs Notre Dame
What do you get when you mix two of college football’s most iconic programs — one from Southern California, and the other from the Midwest?
You get USC vs. Notre Dame, one of the best rivalries in college football. It includes a combined 22 claimed national championships and 15 Heisman Trophy winners. Don’t forget the Jeweled Shillelagh, one of college football’s most visually striking trophies, either.
4. Army-Navy Game
No college football game has more gravitas or pageantry than the Army-Navy Game, held each year as the ceremonial final game of the regular season and taking place after both conference championship weekend and the College Football Playoff selection show. The service members from each school don their respective uniforms, contributing to one of the best spectacles in college football.
3. Texas vs Oklahoma (Red River Rivalry)
New conference, same-old hate.
Texas and Oklahoma may not play during Rivalry Week, but that’s simply because the Longhorns and Sooners have one of the best rivalry backdrops in college football: The Cotton Bowl — colored crimson on one half of the stadium and burnt orange on the other — hosts the game every year during the State Fair of Texas in early October.
Who says teams need to wait till Thanksgiving to hate each other, anyway?
2. Alabama vs Auburn (Iron Bowl)
The Iron Bowl has some of the best-named games in all of college football, from ‘Punt Bama Punt’ in 1972 to ‘Wrong Way Bo’ in 1984. In recent years, the list of games has grown to include ‘The Drive’ in 2009, the ‘Camback’ in 2010 and ‘Kick Six’ in 2013.
In recent history, the Crimson Tide and Tigers’ rivalry arguably reached its zenith from 2009 through 2013, a run that saw them win four combined national titles and nearly win the 2013 BCS championship (courtesy of that legendary Kick Six, which kept Alabama from three-peating).
In true rivalry form, the Crimson Tide got back at the Tigers on the 10-year-anniversary of that play with its own miraculous ‘Fourth-and-31’ in 2023.
1. Ohio State vs Michigan (The Game)
Ohio State and Michigan’s rivalry is marked not only by great players and impactful moments, but also entire eras of college football.
There’s the 10-Year War between Bo Schembechler and Woody Hayes, and Michigan’s dominance over the beleaguered John Cooper in the 1980s and ’90s. (He went 2-10-1 against that most hated of rivals, a fact Wolverines fans understandably revel in).
Jim Tressel went 9-1 vs. ‘That Team Up North’ through the early 2000s, while Urban Meyer lived up to his predecessor with a seven-year unbeaten streak from 2012-18. The pendulum has since swung back in the Wolverines’ favor in recent years, with Michigan downing the Buckeyes four straight seasons — a span of time in which both teams have won national titles.
What else do you expect from a rivalry as ubiquitous as ‘The Game’?
Other notable college football rivalries
Below are the rivalries that received at least one vote from USA TODAY Sports’ panelists:
- Alabama-Tennessee (Third Saturday in October)
- Florida vs. Florida State
- Harvard vs. Yale (The Game)
- Montana vs. Montana State (Brawl of the Wild)
- Georgia vs. Georgia Tech (Clean, Old-Fashioned Hate)
- Texas-Texas A&M (Lone Star Showdown)
- Oklahoma vs. Nebraska
- Cal vs. Stanford (The Big Game)
- Minnesota vs. Wisconsin
- Iowa-Minnesota
- North Dakota State vs. South Dakota State
